508 compliance

[Greg_K]

We've used a few Flash based output tools that claim to be 508 compliant, yet when we sit down with our screen reader user on campus we find the output to be incredibly painful if not just outright unusable. I'm hoping to get some user feedback about the compliance state with Adobe's Presenter and whether it is truly usable to screen reader users. Thanks in advance.

[Wasay-Wit]

Greg, you can download a trail version of the presenter and see for yourself if the presenter works with the screen readers or not, presenter adds a menu in the MS Office PowerPoint so I assume that PowerPoint is well suitable for screen readers but just in case it will be better to check it out.

I will be interested to know if anyone has tested the Presenter with screen readers as their are some local government clients which requires such compliance with any suggested software purchase.

[Guest]

Hey guys,

Support for Section 508 issues is somewhat limited with the Presenter plug-in for PowerPoint; there is a Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) table available on Adobe's website that outlines accessibility issues when using Presenter. The link to that file can be found here:
http://www.adobe.com/macromedia/accessibility/tools/vpat/breeze5_presenter.html

However, as a basic overveiw, Presenter supports:

Closed Captioning through the use of slide notes in PowerPoint. A published presentation incorporates slide notes as an additional panel which can be viewed during playback of Presenter content. It should be noted, however, that panels can be hidden either by launching a presentation in full screen mode, or simply by disabling the notes tab through the Theme Editor prior to publishing.

Navigation and the ability to move through sequential screens in a published presentation. So long as the navigation panel is made available (not displayed in full screen mode), key commands can be used to navigate between slides in a presentation.

NOTE: Until the courseware can be thoroughly tested and optimized for performance within a screen reader environment, this process should not be considered the first option for projects that must adhere to strict Section 508 Accessibility requirements. Additional/further testing is always required in order to determine the process that best fits the client needs in this area.

Adobe has also issued a Tech Note demonstrating techniques to creating accessible content while authoring in PowerPoint, and that document can be found here. Or you can view Adobe's recommendation for creating 508 compliant content at http://www.adobe.com/macromedia/accessibility/features/breeze/accessible_ppt.html